Geoscience Reference
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J. C. Dahl, Eruption
of Vesuvius , 1820,
oil on canvas.
Image not available - no digital rights
somewhere in the gap between the cone and Monte Somma,
the volcanic 'collar' of Vesuvius. The foreground is filled with a
wilderness of broken lava, clearly reminiscent of Crompton's
'black . . . agitated sea', while the intrepid figures remain at a
tolerable distance from the heat. Dahl wrote in his diary that on
20 December 1820 he had climbed Vesuvius, 'and watched in
daylight as well as in the evening, an important eruption - very
interesting'.²9
There is a hint of a new scientific approach here, rather than
a literary and dramatic one, which is underlined by further notes
made by Dahl in which he refers to a picture of 'the small and
big crater taken from the ascent of Vesuvius, for Mr Monticelli,
a professor of mineralogy in Naples.'³0 When Clarkson Stanfield
(1793-1867) watched Vesuvius erupt on 1 January 1839, at a lucky
moment during a tour of Europe, he recorded smoke dense
enough to satisfy even the Duke of Wellington. This is Vesuvius
as it was, rather than Vesuvius as it might be hoped or imagined.
Unlike Wright or Turner, who went to Naples in the hope of see-
ing Vesuvius erupt, it happened for Stanfield by chance: Turner
had left Naples a few weeks early, missing an eruption, while
Stanfield arrived in the vicinity later than he had expected, and
witnessed one. He and his friends climbed the mountain on 31
December when it must have been rumbling, and 'as there was
 
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